A home network environment is one of up-to-date living environments which incorporates digital devices in each home, wherein a large amount of network traffic is generated to control and manage these digital devices. Especially, a home gateway connecting a home network to the outside creates a communication bottleneck. In such home network environments, a mobile agent may be utilized as a new computing model. The agent, which basically is a software agent, corresponds to an autonomous process to perform a task for a specific purpose in place of the user, and has the characteristic of operating as a part of a certain environment or within the environment, without independent existence. Agents may be classified into static agents and mobile agents according to whether or not they have mobility. Each static agent can be executed only within a system which has created the static agent. In contrast, each mobile agent is not restricted to being executed within a system from which the mobile agent has started the execution thereof, can freely move to other servers through a network, and can also communicate with other servers or agents in order to obtain a required solution or to provide service. Therefore, once a mobile agent moves, a large amount of communication is not required between the mobile agent and a system where the mobile agent was created with a purpose, until the mobile agent achieves the purpose. Especially, the asynchronous performance capability and autonomy of the mobile agent makes it possible to significantly reduce network traffic generated in home network environments.
To this end, it is necessary to perform authentication and access control for mobile agents to access to a home network environment. However, according to the conventional authentication and role-based access control method for mobile agents, each mobile agent is allocated a role when the mobile agent is created. Particularly, in environments such as home network environments, where devices use mutually different access control policies, since each mobile agent must be dynamically allocated roles suitable for each home network environment, there is a limitation in applying the conventional authentication and access control methods for mobile agents to home network environments.